Wednesday, February 16, 2005
Insufferable Law Firm
I just received the following in my Harvard Law School email account, complete with a 3MB PDF attachment:
This is outrageous. Student organizations at law schools do not exist in order to forward on propaganda from law firms. Imagine if all the major law firms asked us to "distribute" a regular publication describing "recent happenings" at their firm. We'd never do anything else. Ugh.
I wrote back to Nicole Gunn and told her, very politely, to shove off. I also wrote to the Dean of Students here at HLS (and copied the law school dean) asking if the administration knows how a firm got a list of the email addresses of all the student organization leaders. I hope I get an adequate response.
Good afternoon student organization leaders. Attached is the
inaugural issue of DeweyNow, a newsletter describing recent happenings at DeweyBallantine LLP. We would appreciate if you would distribute it to your members. We hope you enjoy getting to know our firm.
Thank you.
Nicole Gunn
Manager of Legal Recruitment
Dewey Ballantine LLP
This is outrageous. Student organizations at law schools do not exist in order to forward on propaganda from law firms. Imagine if all the major law firms asked us to "distribute" a regular publication describing "recent happenings" at their firm. We'd never do anything else. Ugh.
I wrote back to Nicole Gunn and told her, very politely, to shove off. I also wrote to the Dean of Students here at HLS (and copied the law school dean) asking if the administration knows how a firm got a list of the email addresses of all the student organization leaders. I hope I get an adequate response.
Comments:
The response to my email from our Dean of Students:
Thanks - believe me, there has been an email onslaught from student leaders on this. I have already called Ms. Gunn and am awaiting a returned call. The list of student group leaders is confidential and accessible only on our internal site. Our only speculation is that a student was able to access the internal list and forwarded it to Dewey. Dewey is a great firm. They hire many of our students and they have been very generous with scholarship and public service support here. This was an example of overly enthusiastic outreach to students but rest assured that we will convey the level of student concern on this. I'm confident that this will be the last time you hear from them this way.
Thanks - believe me, there has been an email onslaught from student leaders on this. I have already called Ms. Gunn and am awaiting a returned call. The list of student group leaders is confidential and accessible only on our internal site. Our only speculation is that a student was able to access the internal list and forwarded it to Dewey. Dewey is a great firm. They hire many of our students and they have been very generous with scholarship and public service support here. This was an example of overly enthusiastic outreach to students but rest assured that we will convey the level of student concern on this. I'm confident that this will be the last time you hear from them this way.
You are overreacting by about ten thousand percent. Delete the stupid email and move on with your life!
A simple email to the sender requesting to be removed from the list would have sufficed. There is no need to subject this poor woman to an angry rant -- nor is it necessary to post her email address in a form that allows spam-bots to pick it up. That's just plain mean.
Have some mercy, for goodness sake! The woman messed up, and she's probably been berated by her superiors already. She doesn't need you piling on further.
As a side note, the Dean of Students makes a good point. Don't sour Dewey to future generations of HLS'ers just because you're having a bad day.
A simple email to the sender requesting to be removed from the list would have sufficed. There is no need to subject this poor woman to an angry rant -- nor is it necessary to post her email address in a form that allows spam-bots to pick it up. That's just plain mean.
Have some mercy, for goodness sake! The woman messed up, and she's probably been berated by her superiors already. She doesn't need you piling on further.
As a side note, the Dean of Students makes a good point. Don't sour Dewey to future generations of HLS'ers just because you're having a bad day.
Thank you for your comments. Really. You're right that my post sure is overreactive. In fact, I've gone back and taken out the spambottable email address (although it is on the web on her firm's page).
In my defense, my email to Ms. Gunn was not an "angry rant." It was a very short, polite note asking her not to contact me again.
And my concern isn't so much that I received a spam email (GASP!). It was the fact that the spam email was addressed to a list of the student organizations at HLS. That's why I contacted the Dean of Students--I was concerned that somehow someone was providing this confidential, internal list of email addresses to commercial entities. Not knowing the situation, I didn't want my school to be selling my email address. I wrote this post in the heat of that moment, was subsequently satisfied with the Dean of Students' response, and have moved on with my life.
When you think about it, though, how effective would this strategy have been? If you're an HLS 1L, and the president of your student organization of choice sends you a PDF promoting a particular firm, are you really more likely to want to work for that firm? Even without being spammed, we get enough firm propaganda that it all washes together.
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In my defense, my email to Ms. Gunn was not an "angry rant." It was a very short, polite note asking her not to contact me again.
And my concern isn't so much that I received a spam email (GASP!). It was the fact that the spam email was addressed to a list of the student organizations at HLS. That's why I contacted the Dean of Students--I was concerned that somehow someone was providing this confidential, internal list of email addresses to commercial entities. Not knowing the situation, I didn't want my school to be selling my email address. I wrote this post in the heat of that moment, was subsequently satisfied with the Dean of Students' response, and have moved on with my life.
When you think about it, though, how effective would this strategy have been? If you're an HLS 1L, and the president of your student organization of choice sends you a PDF promoting a particular firm, are you really more likely to want to work for that firm? Even without being spammed, we get enough firm propaganda that it all washes together.
